Author Topic: Farm bill ends subsidies, cuts food stamps  (Read 509 times)

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Offline Rapunzel

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Farm bill ends subsidies, cuts food stamps
« on: January 28, 2014, 03:02:02 am »
http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/27/news/economy/farm-bill/

Farm bill ends subsidies, cuts food stamps
By Jennifer Liberto  @CNNMoney January 27, 2014: 8:03 PM ET

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney)

A group of bipartisan lawmakers on Monday agreed to a deal on a farm bill that would end direct subsidies to farms in favor of crop insurance.

The deal could trim as much as $90 a month from food stamps for 850,000 recipients.

The farm bill would last five years and needs to pass both chambers and then be signed by the president.

The bill could be passed before the spring planting season. That's significant because farmers need to know early how it might affect prices and what to expect for their corn, wheat or tobacco yields.

The bill changes the current agricultural subsidy system. It ends direct payments to farmers for planting crops and replaces it with a revamped, beefed-up crop insurance program.

"Today's bipartisan agreement puts us on the verge of enacting a five-year Farm Bill that saves taxpayers billions, eliminates unnecessary subsidies, creates a more effective farm safety-net and helps farmers and businesses create jobs," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate agriculture panel.

The changes to food stamps would trim $8 billion from the program over the next 10 years, according to congressional aides. That's less than the $39 billion that Republicans had wanted to cut from the program, but double what Democrats had suggested.

Lawmakers say the deal will prevent 17 states from doling out more generous food stamps to people who get federal help to heat or cool their homes, even if the help is as little as $1. They stress the move won't cut families from food stamps, it will just shrink the amount some families get.

850,000 may get $90 less in food stamps

Advocates for the poor are irate. The newly-proposed reductions come just months after the $11 cut from food stamp checks that went into effect on Nov. 1, when the recession-era boost in funding ended.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Farm bill ends subsidies, cuts food stamps
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2014, 03:37:21 am »
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/27/the-cuts-in-the-new-and-improved-farm-bill-arent-really/

The “cuts” in the new-and-improved farm bill… aren’t, really.
posted at 7:21 pm on January 27, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The House GOP was originally looking for around a 5 percent cut to the almost $80 billion/year federal food-stamp program in the latest iteration of the long-overdue farm bill. The Senate Democrats were appalled by such — uhm — “excess,” preferring an obviously much more responsible cut of half of one percent. This, evidently, is what compromise looks like:

   
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A House plan to make major cuts to food stamps would be scaled back under a bipartisan agreement on a massive farm bill, a near end to a more than two-year fight that has threatened to hurt rural lawmakers in an election year.

    The measure announced Monday by the House and Senate Agriculture committees preserves food stamp benefits for most Americans who receive them and continues generous subsidies for farmers. The House could vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday.

    The compromise was expected to cut food stamps by about $800 million a year, or around 1 percent. …

    The final bill released Monday would cost almost $100 billion a year over five years, with a cut of around $2.3 billion a year from current spending.
A $2 billion cut in spending (whoop-de-doo) from our absolutely current spending levels, perhaps, but it wasn’t so very long ago that we were spending drastically less than that on the omnibus whopper that is the farm bill’s marriage of political convenience between food stamps and agriculture subsides. 2008, in fact. Chris Edwards at Cato explains:

   
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It looks like the final farm bill will be expected to cost about $950 billion over 10 years. CRS has details on bill versions from the Fall, but I adjusted those numbers based on the reported GOP cave-in on food stamps.

    If the final number is $950 billion, the 2014 farm bill will cost 48 percent more than the $640 billion farm bill passed in 2008. Farm bill supporters claim that the new bill includes “savings” and “cuts,” but that is a myth created by the rising CBO baseline. The reality is that Congress is set to impose a huge, damaging, and unaffordable burden on taxpayers and the economy.

Even though the Congressional conferees are finally inking their “compromise,” however, the rest of the week will likely determine whether or not it finally makes a peaceful and uncontested journey through both chambers of Congress, or if Democrats and/or Republicans decide to raise another legislative ruckus (just look at Politico‘s report on the afternoon’s development for an idea of the absurdly complex degree to which various agriculture lobbies are frantically tightening their cronyish, rent-seeking grips on maintaining even the marginal cuts to their precious subsidies that the conferees’ version managed to make). If any Republicans do make some noise over the (pitifully small) cuts to the ever-burgeoning food-stamp program, you can count on Democrats to fully exploit it as another opportunity to tout their favored populist messaging, but I would riddle the Democrats this: In what world is this a sign of an economic “recovery”?

   
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In a first, working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps — a switch from a few years ago, when children and the elderly were the main recipients.

    Some of the change is due to demographics, such as the trend toward having fewer children. But a slow economic recovery with high unemployment, stagnant wages and an increasing gulf between low-wage and high-skill jobs also plays a big role. It suggests that government spending on the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program — twice what it cost five years ago — may not subside significantly anytime soon.

    Food stamp participation since 1980 has grown the fastest among workers with some college training, a sign that the safety net has stretched further to cover America’s former middle class, according to an analysis of government data for The Associated Press by economists at the University of Kentucky. Formally called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, the program now covers 1 in 7 Americans.
Answer: It isn’t, and Democrats’ big-spending, big-government policies are not succeeding in helping provide Americans with the opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty, nor in generating the real level of economic growth necessary for them to do so.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Formerly Once-Ler

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Re: Farm bill ends subsidies, cuts food stamps
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2014, 07:53:27 am »
I am sure the unappeasables will frown at a reduction food stamps and ending subsidies because its not enough and they don't recognize the reality of a twice elected rat President or a rat majority in the Senate. 

I applaud my GOPe representatives for tightening the belt on the poor.  A politically dangerous move when so many people are struggling with flat incomes and Obamacare expenses.

Gosh I hope it passes...still waiting for a wink emoticon

 :vote: